The following letter to the editor was sent on February 9, 2009 and printed on February 13, 2009. The published version was missing the PADI paragraph and the hyperlink paragraph for some reason.

Embryonic Stem Cells Are Left Over From Fertility Clinics and Would’ve Been Thrown Out

I read the January 30th article where the pastor doesn’t want embryonic stem cells used because he says it’s immoral. So you think that it’s immoral to search for a cure for disorders like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Sickle Cell Anemia?

The surplus embryos used are left over from fertility clinics. If they also aren’t used for stem cells, then they are thrown out. Its short life served some purpose instead of being thrown out. Would you rather be a 100-cell blastocyst that’s thrown away because it’s left over from a fertility clinic and then rots in the trash? Or would you rather be a 100-cell blastocyst that’s harvested for stem cell growth and research? It’s kind of like we’d rather die in a car accident and have our organs and tissues donated than die in a car accident and rot in coffins.

I have a genetically predisposed disorder. I have friends, family, and relatives with genetically predisposed disorders. You might see me with my family friend who trembles from Parkinson’s, or with friends or relatives who have blindness, Diabetes, heart disorders, MS, Trigeminal Neuralgia, Crohn's Disease, Alzheimer’s, or Autism. I would like for everybody to know friends, family, and relatives with genetic disorders, or severe burns, or a neurological disorder to get their opinions and their research that they have collected. Stem cells are also used for burns or for organ regeneration.

Before leaving Purdue, I was a member of PADI: Purdue Advocates for Disability Issues.

I’m almost at the 300 word limit. You can read more research and hyperlinks at http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~skeptic/stemcells.htm .

Matt Stath
Purdue Graduate

Part 2: Media

I never say that I know every facet of stem cells.

NOVA Science NOW is a good place to start getting more info about stem cells:
Stem Cells April 2005 (About 15 min)
Stem Cell update January 2006 (About 8 min)
Stem Cell Breakthrough July 23, 2008 (About 13 min, 39 secs)

In the April 19th, 2005 documentary at 10:13, a Catholic says, "This is the worst kind of Science imaginable." I heard that and I thought, "No, the experiments that Nazis did in death camps on people are the worst kinds of Science imaginable. Or nuclear weapons are the worst kind of science imaginable." Also in the video, The US House of Representatives has voted twice to make human cloning a crime. If the bill becomes law, then cloning could bring 10 years in jail, or a $1,000,000 fine. There are arguments that the prisons are overcrowded and that we’re not putting enough murders, drunk drivers who kill, pedophiles, and rapists into prison. Shouldn’t we as a nation round up pedophiles and put them in prison instead of a cloner who destroys a 100-cell unviable blastocyst smaller than a grain of sand?

When there’s an article in the newspaper about stem cells, I cut it out and keep it. Whenever TIME, Newsweek, or U.S. News and World Report will have an article about stem cells I will buy the issues or photocopy the article pages. Whenever I see a news web link about stem cells on my home page, I bookmark it.

For a great article on stem cells, go to The "Brothers With Heart" article online for free from the August 2001 issue of Discover. For info about stem cells from adults, placentas, and umbilical cords like induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells, read the February 9, 2009 issue of TIME. Check out the July 2005 issue of National Geographic about stem cells. For an issue with 3 articles about stem cells, look in the August 20, 2001 issue of TIME. Sorry, I don’t have a link to it.

I read in TIME, National Geographic, and in an internet article that scientists have used stem cells to create hearts that actually beat. How cool is that!?

At least one of the 4 genes added to induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells (adult stem cells) can cause tumors according to NOVA Science NOW and TIME.

I want to print one particular paragraph from page 7 of the July 2005 National Geographic:

Advocates counter that adult stem cells, useful as they may be for some diseases, have thus far proved incapable of producing the full range of cell types that embryonic stem cells can. They point out that fertility clinic freezers worldwide are bulging with thousands (Actually 100,000s) of unwanted embryos slated for disposal. Those (five-day-old) embryos are each smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. They have no identifying features or hints of a nervous system. If parents agree to donate them, supporters say, it would be unethical not to do so in the quest to cure people of disease. (Then there’s a photograph of a five-day old embryo in the eye of a needle on page 11.)

Somebody wrote a letter to the editor of The Exponent years ago about the abortion or emergency contraceptive issue. She said that a Jewish group believes from a holy book (I don’t remember if they’re talking about the Tanakh, Torah, Midrash, Mishnah, or another book.) that for the first 40 days of pregnancy that the baby is just water. She explains why if you’re a Christian or a Jew that a miscarriage or abortion should be OK on day 40 or sooner. Personally I don’t think that brain waves even occur yet. I don’t believe that viable life, (life where it’s able to live outside the womb) begins on or before day 40.

A different person wrote a letter to The Exponent years ago when the letters were also about emergency contraceptives or abortion. She said that an estimated 50% of fertilized eggs can’t stick to the uterus lining because the zygote has a chromosome defect. It made me think that the next time that a blastocyst is used for stem cells that there’s a 50% chance that it wouldn’t have stayed in the uterus wall if it was implanted.

I believe I was watching 60 Minutes. A boy with Sickle Cell Anemia had his bone marrow radiated and/or removed. They used a stem cell bone marrow treatment from somebody and it cured his sickle cell. The weird side effect, if it actually effects anything other than his medical history, is that now he has a different blood type.

I don’t believe Ann Coulter understands Science concepts like evolution or stem cells. In an article in 2001, she explained why she thinks that embryonic stem cells won’t work. Though I’m a Republican, I’m annoyed by Ann Coulter.

So-called psychic Sylvia Browne on the Montel Williams show is insane or a fraud. On Montel, she explained why she thinks that adult stem cells should be used instead of still using embryonic cells. She sounded like she didn’t do hardly any research. She talked like an idiot or con artist again.

Part 3: Stem Cells Continued

Complaining about 100-cell embryos being destroyed is crying wolf compared to complaining about partial birth abortion. I’m very pro-life and your crying wolf is ridiculous. Shouldn’t you instead be complaining about third trimester abortions and partial birth abortions when the baby is more viable? I believe that the statistic is that 90% of miscarriages occur in the first trimester and so do 90% of abortions. About 15% of pregnancies end in miscarriages.

If you don’t like abortions, then don’t have one. You should also continue to teach safer sex, practice abstinence or monogamy, and family planning practices like condoms, birth control pills, and emergency contraceptives for fewer abortions. There’s not much else you can do unless you seriously want to move to a place like Romania where I think that abortion is still banned. It’s plain and simple if you're against embryos being used. If you’re against embryonic stem cell harvesting or research, then don’t donate your sperm or eggs to fertility clinics.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using stem cells from umbilical cords, bone marrow, and adults instead of embryos. Adult, placenta, and umbilical cord stem cells can’t morph into as many types of cells as embryonic stem cells can. As you get older and older, more "epigenome" methyl groups attach to your DNA. This means that you are harder to successfully clone as you get older. Or if you get cloned then the clone wouldn’t live as long or would have a higher mortality rate. It's about the same way with adult stem cells.

Tie your shoes, and then untie them. Do this hundred or thousands of times without getting new shoelaces. The shoelaces wearing out or getting shorter are like telomeres attached to chromosome DNA. A cell needs telomere DNA to reproduce. Every time that a cell divides, it risks telomeres getting shorter or more worn out. Telomeres are one kind of biological clock. The older you get, the more your telomeres are worn out, and the harder you are to clone or use for adult stem cells. In older people, a telomere might become so short that it's gone and the more vital DNA decays or unravels. It is believed that cells with no telomeres in older people will stop dividing. One theory is that some schizophrenics have shorter telomeres. I can get into some more technical vocabulary terms for telomere functions, but I don't want to because you get it.

Not all DNA is in the 46 chromosomes in the nucleus. Some DNA is in an organelle powerhouse called a mitochondrion. Liver cells have more mitochondria. It has been said that athletes have more mitochrondria. Anyways, mitochondria decay as you get older. Mitochondria are another biological clock. If your adult cells were cloned or used for stem cells, then that's one reason that cells could cause some problems. Scientists were cloning dogs and they noticed that there's double the mitochondria. That's because there's the mitochondria from both the surrogate and the DNA donor.

It is believed that clones will have higher the rates of diabetes, obesity, lower IQs, and other disorders. I believe that they were talking about clones of adult cells because of reasons like methyl groups attached to adult DNA, adult mitochondria, and adult telomeres. I can see less biological problems with embryonic stem cells and embryo cloning than with cells from adults.

I voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 for political, military, and social reasons; not for religious reasons or his background in Science. In the summer of 2001, he was for limited funding for stem cell research. He was against cloning and one of his quotes was that it could lead to the army of the cloned perfect soldiers. My next thought was, "You’re misunderstanding it because you’re a politician and not a Scientist. OK, you’d rather be killed by a natural soldier than a cloned soldier?"

In 2001, George W. Bush said in TIME magazine, "Many people are finding that the more they know about stem-cell research the less certain they are." Though the technology has advanced in 7 1/2 years, the more I learn about stem cells the more certain I am.

Stem cells will benefit a lot of people like diabetes (Mary Tyler Moore), Parkinson’s (Michael J Fox), or spinal cord injuries (people like the late Christopher Reeve).

If you choose bone marrow instead of stem cells, then bone marrow transplants are dangerous and carry a risk of rejection.

With U.S. restrictions on embryonic stem cell use, I believe it’s a big reason why countries like France, Germany, Korea, and Singapore are getting ahead of us in stem cell research.

You might say that life begins at conception. What life? It doesn’t have the potential for life unless it’s transferred into a cell’s uterus.

Some miscarriages can be caused by listeria, hepatitis, other infections, caffeine, tobacco, or genetics. One theory is that the mother's immune system will sometimes attack the baby. The cause of some miscarriages may never be known. Not all of these stem cell lines will lead to a baby if implanted in a woman. Some will lead to miscarriages.

I want to type something else while I’m on the topic of cells a few hours or days old. I don't believe that 72-hour contraceptives should be banned partly because there are girls and women who are victims of molestation, rape, and incest. Not all of these girls or women can take care of their babies. There are also girls and women who's health or lives are in danger if they don't get contraceptives or an abortion.

We need scientists to make these decisions and leave the theology up to the theologians. Continue believing in God if you want to, but don’t force your beliefs on other people.

It’s amazing what has been called immoral or against the will of God. When the smallpox vaccine was invented, people said that it was against the will of God. There are people today like some of the Seventh Day Adventists, who believe in prayer instead of insulin because they think that it’s more effective or that insulin is against the will of God. Some Jehovah’s witnesses are against blood transfusions because they consider it to be unforgivable cannibalism! You’re already against embryonic stem cell use because you think it’s against the will of God or immoral. Do you think that vaccines, c-sections, in-vitro fertilization, test tube babies, chemotherapy, radiation treatments, biopsies, organ donations, transfusions, gene therapy, and surgeries are against the will of God?

I would like to have a meeting organized about stem cells for The Purdue Skeptics Society, Science Club, or Purdue Pugwash.

To my understanding, Purdue Pugwash will have a meeting this semester about stem cells. Look here or here for info as it gets updated.

Part 4 will appear in late February or early March.

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